As you might expect, a lot of the traffic was due to the Cork City Marathon at the start of June as people were looking for news, previews, photos, results and so on. Suprisingly enough though, this wasn't the most popular post last month! Back in March, I put up a post about the Olympic torch relay coming to Dublin with a map of the route. At the time, it didn't generate much interest but all that changed in early June as thousands of people came to the site via Google as they searched for information on the torch route. I found it a bit ironic that people in Dublin had to go to a site called 'Running in Cork' to get information about an event in Dublin! ;o)
The site also passed a smaller milestone as I put up the 2,000th post just a few days ago!
Another site to hit another peak recently was the Running in Munster blog. Last May, it hit a peak of 12,101 hits which in itself, probably makes it the second largest athletics/running website in Munster after the Running in Cork site. The Running in Munster site started out back in 2008 when I wanted to put up results for races outside of Cork. I discovered early on that interest in road races for runners in Cork doesn't necessarily end at the border of the county! If someone lives in say East Cork then they are as likely to be interested in races in Co.Waterford as they are in Co.Cork.
Back in 2008, I found that a lot of race results were scattered across a large number of small websites. Some races didn't seem to put their results anywhere so that people could see them. All in all, it was difficult for new runners to find race results. So with the objective of having one site for all of the results in Munster, the Running in Munster blog was born. It now has fixtures and results for nearly every race in Munster excluding Cork. Both sites have identical race calendars which have a list of every race in Cork and Munster. These are currently the most accurate and detailed calendars for races in Munster.
So, if you are taking part in any race in Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Tipperary or Waterford, check out the Running in Munster site to find the race results.
Good man john! Well done! Must say, your website is probably the first thing i check every day. You do a great job on it. It must take a lot of time and effort but it is very much appreciated. if it weren't for your website i probably would have stopped running years ago as this is where i get all my info for races! Thanks John.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the race calendar. The only thing missing is possible upcoming races. If there was a way to put in those it would be great. Like putting in no time or date maybe just the month. The default view could be definite races and then you could select that show possible other races going on last years calendar also but have it clear than any of these events might not happen as currently it means checking runireland, eagle's site, your own, bhaa etc etc. If all sites were as good as the rest of the content then the internet would be a much better place. Unreal work and I am aware of how hard it is to do this as I have done it for other sports with only 1 or 2 posts a week.
ReplyDeleteThe calendar covers fixtures for the current month and the following month. This actually cover the vast majority of races that people are interested in.
ReplyDeleteI check a lot of race calendars as well and I know from experience not to trust any of them. Some of the 'official' calendars are so bad that you'd have to wonder why they bother at all.
I couldn't agree more but I have recently wanted to plan staged races in the build up to DCM and it was a huge ordeal to get the right distances at the right time and also not traveling 100's of miles. I don't know if there is a solution tbh. It would make sense that if the AAI have a searchable DB of permits as it would 1 promote local races and 2 ensure that they are run in accordance with the correct standards. We shouldn't have to rely on your good self, single clubs or runireland.
ReplyDelete